Printing services Web sites allowing a user to access the site from the user's home or work and design a personalized product are well known and widely used by many consumers, professionals, and businesses. For example, VistaPrint Limited markets a variety of printed products, such as business cards, postcards, brochures, holiday cards, announcements, and invitations, online through the site VistaPrint.com. Typically, printing services sites allow the user to review thumbnail images of a number of customizable designs prepared by the site operator having a variety of different styles, formats, backgrounds, color schemes, fonts and graphics from which the user may choose. When the user has selected a specific product template design to customize, the sites typically provide online tools allowing the user to incorporate the user's personal information and content into the selected template to create a custom document design. When the design is completed to the user's satisfaction, the user can place an order through the site for production and delivery of a desired quantity of the corresponding printed product.
Printing services sites strive to have the image of the product that is displayed to the customer on the customer's computer display be as accurate a representation as possible of the physical product that the user will later receive. Trying to simulate on the user's computer display the visual effect of areas of the product that are foil has historically posed a problem. The foils that are often found on holiday cards and other printed products are typically quite shiny and reflect ambient light hitting the foil surface. Simulating the effect of light striking the surface of foil using a computer display has not proven easy to achieve.
Without clear visual cues to assist the customer in recognizing the foil areas in a displayed product image and distinguishing those areas from the non-foil areas, a customer may misunderstand the type or locations of the materials used on the product or may decline to place an order because of uncertainty. To minimize the risk of customer confusion and disappointment, it is highly desirable that the customer be shown an image of the product that is as accurate a depiction of the physical product as possible and that indicates the foil regions of the product in an understandable way. There is, therefore, a need for systems and methods for preparing product images for displaying on a user's computer display in a manner that indicates the location or locations in the product design of reflective materials by suggesting the effects of light on those materials and clearly distinguishes those regions from other regions of the product.